Computer games, video games, arcade games, and other forms of electronic games have advanced from simple games such as Pong, Breakout, Asteroids, and Space Invaders to complex, multiplayer, online high-resolution games such as CRIMSON SKIES®, published by Microsoft Game Studios of Redmond Wash.
Initial online multiplayer games had no mechanism for players to communicate with each other while playing the game, unless the players were either physically located near each other or communicated through a separate medium such as a separate telephone call. As online gaming progressed, online games began providing players limited communication capabilities, such as being able to text chat while playing the game.
With the launch of XBOX® LIVE by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. in November 2002 came in-game voice chat capabilities. Microsoft provides a software development kit (SDK) for XBOX® LIVE with which game developers can include voice chat support in their game titles. In order for two players to chat, they must have the same game title executing on their respective game consoles, and both be signed in to the XBOX® LIVE online gaming environment.
When two players do not have the same game title executing on their respective XBOX® game consoles, they cannot voice chat with each other. Instead, one must send the other an invitation for a specific game, and the recipient of the invitation must change game media to the specific game. Even then, players must typically match up to play a game before they will be able to voice chat with one another. If the two players subsequently decide to play a different game, then the players must change media again to be able to continue voice chatting, making game coordination lengthy and difficult.
Another problem that often occurs is the inability of a player to adequately respond to a game invitation beyond simply selecting not to join the Friend. The invited gamer might not currently wish to play or may want to but lack the specified game disc. This would result in gamers either not matching up to play or spending excess time inviting each other back and forth until stumbling upon a game that both were able to play.
Thus it would be an advancement in the art to provide a mechanism for gamers to connect and carry on real-time voice communications without requiring that each gamer have the same game media loaded in their respective game consoles, thus creating an opportunity for expanded community, building relationships, and allowing gamers the opportunity to “meet up” with Friends online in order to talk and plan out game title selections and game times.
Regardless of the environment in which the chat sessions occur, however, present chat applications provide only limited mechanisms by which players can communicate. That is, in a text chat, players can only type back and forth, with limited expression in the form of emoticons. Basic emoticons are include the following:
:-) or :) Basic smiling face; used for humor and sometimes sarcasm
:-( or :( Basic frowning face; used for sadness or anger
;-) or ;) Half-smiling or winking face; more often used for sarcasm
:-/ Wry face; used for wry humor
Similarly, in a voice chat, players can only speak to each other, without the advantage of any emoticons because there is no text involved in a voice chat. Text chat systems and electronic mail have enabled users only to send text-based emoticons, but no system has created a two-way real-time voice chat capability or allowed user to not only send iconic emoticons but to also send sound alerts and to affect the actual hardware of the other user's system. Thus, it would be a further advancement in the art to provide new mechanisms of communication in a voice, audio, and/or video chat session that allow interacting users to convey emotions, actions, and the like.